Angelaeon Circle 2 - Eye of the Sword (36 page)

Catellus dashed up to Trevin. “Help me with the shields.” He sheathed his dagger and leaped onto the king’s tilted throne. Plaster showered down around him.

“Catellus, get back!” shouted Trevin.

Catellus reached as high as he could, clawing at the wall.

Trevin seized him by the collar and yanked him away as chunks of wall crashed down.

“They’ll be buried,” cried Catellus, twisting out of Trevin’s grip.

Trevin turned to see a malevolent spear one of Melaia’s bodyguards. Jarrod pressed the malevolent into a retreat, Livia met the advance of another, and
Stalia stalked toward Melaia’s last bodyguard. Behind him, Melaia backed away with the harp, her face ashen.

Trevin began fighting his way toward Melaia, sensing Ollena close behind him.

King Laetham bellowed for the fight to halt, but two malevolents swept toward him and Lord Beker. Ollena dived between them with a shout.

Trevin ducked the wild swing of a sword, ran his attacker through, and stumbled across the upturned floor, desperate to reach Melaia. He saw Jarrod finish off a malevolent. “Jarrod!” he yelled. “Get Melaia and the harp out of here!”

Jarrod nodded and reached for Melaia, and Trevin lunged for Stalia and grabbed her just as another tremor hit. They both fell.

Stalia wormed out of Trevin’s grip, scrambled over a pile of roof tiles, and headed for a breach in the south wall.

Trevin stumbled after her. A lampstand toppled, and flames shot up the white drapery. Walls wavered. Shouts rang from every direction.

Stalia slipped through the breach in the wall.

Trevin sidestepped widening cracks, ducked to avoid falling timbers, and swerved to miss tumbling tiles.

At last he gained the breach and edged out into the brine-laden breeze. Into the red of sunset. Onto the promontory of the chalk bluff that ended in a sheer drop to the sea below.

Stalia stood calmly at the edge of the cliff, facing Trevin with her needle-sharp knife, her white cloak billowing in the sea breeze.

Holding his sword with both hands, Trevin eased toward her, determined not to fail this time.

“You’re making a grave mistake,” said Stalia. “I’m not who you think I am.”

“I know.” Trevin tightened his grip. Pain numbed his right hand. “You’re a decrepit old child.”

“Old, I am. Decrepit child? I think not. I’m on your side. I waited here for you.”

“Liar. You’re here because you’re trapped.”

“Am I?” She sheathed her knife. “Put away your sword and come with me. We can help each other. I have what you want, and you have what I want.”

“I’ll see that you never get it.” He kept his blade aimed at her heart. As long as he lived, she would not touch the harps. Or Melaia.

“You’re wrong,” she said. “We’re all in the game. But you and I, we’re on the same side, Son.”

Trevin gritted his teeth. Lord Rejius, too, had called him
son
to taunt him. He narrowed his eyes. “Don’t try to manipulate me.”

Stalia’s eyebrows arched. “How like your father you are. I should never have doubted him when he told me you were safe.” She raised her hood.

Trevin caught his breath as the memory flooded in. He stood in a cavern. A cloaked figure rolled him a green ball, large and smooth. He had never seen such a grand bauble. His right hand reached for it, touched it. A dagger flashed. Strong arms grabbed him, pressed his hand, pressed the blood, pressed the flame-hot pain, pressed his mouth to stifle the screams.

As other images surfaced, Trevin struggled to hold his sword steady. He remembered trundling through a long lanterned corridor, clutching his father’s big hand, reaching for a carved toy horse on a stone shelf, crawling into his mother’s warm lap in a cold, lamp-lit cave. And glancing up from the green ball to see her—it
was
her—cloaked and hooded, attacking him with a dagger.

Trevin stared at Stalia. Her eyes. He remembered her eyes. His hand throbbed.

She was the figure from his terror-dream.

She was his mother.

“You,” he growled. “
You
maimed me.”

“I saved you,” she hissed.

A sea of thoughts crashed over Trevin. He was the son of Stalia and grandson of Rejius, who knew exactly who his game piece was. Every shameful failure, every misstep, every wrong choice washed over Trevin. He was the heir of treachery and deceit and cruelty. He swayed, a wave of nausea weakening his legs.

Stalia’s voice drifted around him like a soothing song. “You can help end all this. Come with me. Bring the harps. Bring Melaia.”

Melaia’s name anchored him.
I forgive you for the past, completely and forever. Can you ever forgive me for what I’ve done to our future?

If she could forgive him, and he could forgive her, then he could forgive himself. He could face the whole of his rotten, damnable past.

“It will not control my future,” he muttered, gripping his sword.

“Bring the harps,” Stalia crooned. “Bring Melaia.”

“No!” Trevin shouted. “You will not control my future!” Yelling like a warrior, he lunged.

Stalia turned and stepped off the cliff, the flutter of her cloak the only sound as she dropped out of sight toward the sea.

Trevin stumbled and fell to his knees, gasping, numb. He stared at the spot where Stalia had fallen, half expecting her to reappear. But she didn’t. She had vanished, as if she truly had been a dream.

Then he glimpsed movement along the face of the cliff to the east, a white figure gliding swiftly along a ledge only a goat could tread. The Ibex paused and glanced back, her face hidden in the depths of her hood, then disappeared around the curve of the bluff.

Trevin rose slowly, stunned, his breath trapped in his throat.

Then a crash exploded behind him, and he turned to see the entire palace collapse.

“Melaia!” he cried. “Dwin!”

He ran toward the crumbled wall, then staggered back, the blistering flames that licked at the rubble keeping him at bay.

Fool!
he railed at himself. Windweaver had told him to use the harp wisely.
Fool!

Trevin’s knees buckled. Trapped between the fire and the cliff, he fell to the ground, exhausted, alone, completely and utterly broken.

ll night Trevin fought sleep but was too weary to keep his eyes open. He dozed, restless, with flames crackling on one side and waves crashing on the other. He dreamed that Stalia had returned to kill him by stabbing him again and again with her needle-sharp knife.

When he awoke, he discovered a small drak pecking at the harp pendant that lay on his chest.

“Peron!” Trevin grabbed for her, but she squawked and flapped away. “I’m sorry,” he called. “I won’t hurt you.”

She shrank to a speck over the eastern horizon and disappeared.

Trevin closed his hand around the small harp and stared at the smoldering ruins of Alta-Qan. Only a corner of the temple stood whole. The rest was rubble. And undoubtedly a grave.

But whose? It was the one pain he was not prepared to face. He had only just confronted the pain of his past. How could he face a future of agony? And once again, his fault.

He wiped his eyes. How could he survive if—

A shout split the air. His name.

“Here!” he cried, leaping to his feet. He slipped his sword into its scabbard and ran to the edge of the rubble. “Here! On the bluff!”

Picking a path through the smoldering rubble, he slowly made his way to the top of the mound. On the other side, a line of searchers crept across the debris: Caepio, Paullus, Jarrod, Livia, Pym. And Melaia.

Trevin waved and shouted, “Here! Up here!”

As they cheered, Trevin ran, leaped, slid, and slipped down the pile of
rubble. The others, Melaia in the lead, scrambled toward him over the debris. She grabbed him, and he pulled her into a tight hug.

“I’m not letting go ever, ever, ever,” she cried into his torn tunic. “I thought you had been crushed, and it was my fault.”

“Your fault?”

“It was the harp. I began the earthquake by playing the harp.”

“I told you to play. If anyone is at fault, it’s me.” Trevin stroked her hair and looked at the group before him, hanging back. “Where’s Dwin?” he asked.

“He’s not with you?” asked Jarrod.

Melaia looked up, tears spilling down her cheeks. “We haven’t found Dwin or my father or Ollena. But we thought
you
were gone, and here you are. Maybe we’ll find the others alive too.”

“Hanni and the girls?” asked Trevin.

“With Serai,” said Livia. “They’ve set up a place for the wounded outside the burial grounds.”

Trevin held tight to Melaia. She was trembling like a scared rabbit. “Catellus?”

“He’s working with the shields.” Pym raked his hand through his hair. “He’s trying to find a way to release the comains. He’s desperate for it, he is.”

“And the harps?” asked Trevin. “Did you get the harps out?”

“Both,” said Melaia.

He looked toward Qanreef sprawling across the coast, its whitewashed houses glinting in the sun. “What about the city?”

“Cracks in every wall,” said Paullus, “but here on the bluff is where the ground split.”

With Melaia beside him, Trevin joined the searchers. They tossed aside charred wood, roof tiles, and chunks of clay. As they dug through layer after layer of debris, they called out and listened for signs of life.

They found Fornian and Melaia’s bodyguards, all three dead. Each body was carried to the burial grounds.

It was late morning when Jarrod shouted, “Over here!”

Trevin and Melaia staggered through the wreckage to where Jarrod, Caepio, and Pym were tugging away timbers. When Trevin neared, Jarrod pointed into
a small chasm. A hand was visible beneath shards of tile. A hand wearing a large ruby ring.

They yanked aside piece after piece of tile and stone. The first body they reached was Ollena’s, a dagger protruding from her chest. The king groaned beneath her.

Trevin knelt and helped raise her out of the chasm. He thought he caught a whiff of sandalwood, but where was the light, the sunset red? She would open her eyes, wouldn’t she? She couldn’t be gone.

Breathe, Ollena. Breathe. You were born to this. You were born to this. You were
.

Trevin bowed his head.

A soft hand swept back his hair. “She saved my father’s life,” murmured Melaia.

“It’s what she was born to do,” said Trevin.

Livia knelt beside him. “Do you want to help carry her to the burial grounds?”

Trevin wiped his eyes and shook his head. “I have to find Dwin.”

He watched as Livia, Pym, and a group of townsmen carried Ollena and the king toward the grounds beyond the temple wall, which had become a field of the dead and wounded. Melaia walked with them, holding the king’s hand.

Trevin wiped his brow on his sleeve and turned back to the search, calling for Dwin. Now and then he paused to eye the city streets below, hoping to see his brother among the milling crowds. A call from Jarrod or Paullus or Catellus, who had joined the search midafternoon, would take him scrambling their direction, dreading what he would find.

As the sun lowered, a cry rang from the far eastern end of the rubble. Trevin, weary and sore, wove his way to Jarrod and Catellus.

“We found Lady Jayde’s knife.” Jarrod handed him a thin, needle-sharp blade.

Trevin’s heart sank. “The lady had her knife with her when she escaped. This is Dwin’s.”

He attacked the hill of debris with the blade, digging like a madman. The knife hit stone.

“Dwin!” Trevin called, prying at the stone’s edge. It didn’t move, but he heard a groan. “Dwin!” Furiously he swept rubble from the huge stone.

The rest of the searchers joined him. Together they wedged up the massive stone. As they heaved it aside, they saw a small chamber formed by angled slabs of wall. At the bottom lay Dwin, unmoving.

Trevin climbed into the rift. As he stroked Dwin’s dark curls back from his eyes, Dwin groaned, and his swollen face contorted with pain. “You’ll be all right, Dwin,” said Trevin. “You’ll live.”

“That’s a pity,” Dwin whispered.

Catellus climbed down with an armful of cloaks tied end to end, and Trevin slipped the center cloak under Dwin like a sling. Together, the search party eased Dwin out of the rubble.

As they approached the burial grounds, Melaia ran to Trevin, her eyes swollen from crying. “Is he—”

“Alive,” said Trevin. “But it will be a while before he bests me at swords.”

They laid Dwin on a mat beside Lord Beker, who winced as Hanni bandaged his arm.

Melaia knelt on the other side of Dwin. “Trevin?”

He looked up. Even with dirt streaks across her face and her hair mussed, she was beautiful, her eyes wide and questioning.

“My father is badly wounded,” she said softly. “What if—”

Trevin felt her panic. If the king died, she would be queen. He surveyed the grounds. Guards, many of them Angelaeon, stood posted in a perimeter around the field. He had been too distraught to sense them before, but now he felt their light forming a barrier of protection.

“My mind is a pile of rubble,” she said. “I can’t think.”